


all the snow is red

by aurora_borealis



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Cannibalism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-08
Updated: 2013-08-08
Packaged: 2017-12-22 20:50:26
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/917878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aurora_borealis/pseuds/aurora_borealis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Even before it hits the ground.</p>
            </blockquote>





	all the snow is red

Rickon dreams and it's real it  _is_ even when he's awake that's all there is the dream world is the same as the one around him as the one he left and they're all the same when you close your eyes and feel at them. Reach inside. Claw and bite at them. It's not so different when you go deep into it the way Shaggydog tells him with his mind when he does what Shaggydog does, when he's still in his body but he walks inside Shaggydog, eats with him, licks off the meat and blood but it's sharp teeth in his mouth instead of little ones.

Rickon doesn't like the little ones so much. They were why he was too little and not able to do much of anything. Now he knows why all the people tried to lock away Shaggydog and keep them away from each other, it wasn't because they were angry with either of them. It was because they were scared. Rickon's been scared but now he isn't, he doesn't need to be, sometimes he feels like he's never going to be afraid ever again, even though he never tells Osha this. She wouldn't understand. She tries to keep him close even when they're hunting but he doesn't tell her sometimes that he's not there waiting in the cave nearby even if it looks like he is.He's with Shaggy, hunting, for animals, and to Shaggy men are animals too. He's safer there than he is without him, if he'd had Shaggy with him all the time then he wouldn't have had to run away, he could be back home where the snow is, and he dreams of snow but that, that's never anywhere but in the dream world and he wants to see it. What it must look like, feel like, taste like. He remember  _winter is coming_ and that's when the real snow, not the little soft snow, it comes and maybe when he goes back that's when winter will come. 

_I wish I could still be back there_ he thinks even though he likes it here. Here he can run and do whatever he wants, Osha doesn't tell him what to do all the time. But he wants his mother and father and brothers and sisters but they left just like he did now. He was so sad when he hadn't left. Now Osha tells him they had to leave, he wouldn't have wanted to stay and there was nothing there for her so it was a good idea for them to come here if they had to leave this was the place. No one would harm them here. 

When he goes back no one is going to hurt him because in his dreams sometimes other animals try and hurt him, animals bigger than people, with horns and teeth. People have swords but even people with swords die because of animals. They wear animals on their clothes but they can't really be them. But Rickon is a wolf. If everyone becomes a wolf then they can all come back, to Winterfell. It was named after Winter, and even that always comes back, he knows because the words told him and some words aren't true and don't make sense but those ones do.

Sometimes he pretends he's a king and Shaggydog is too, and Osha is a warrior and when they hunt they're fighting a war with all the other animals in nature that hunt him and bite him and make him forget because he doesn't remember. He can't feel how cold snow is and he doesn't know how much colder winter snow is and he sees the castle in his dream but part of it is from the dream world and he gets lost in it because it isn't anyone's anymore. But those are dreams and he's not going to cry because of them, they're real as the world but in a different way and in the world so many things aren't real.

He leans up against Shaggydog. He is so soft and big and warm and brave and Rickon is going to be just like him when he becomes a man. He takes one hand and pets Shaggydog's ears and his other hand wipes his mouth, red smearing on his dirty hand. He can still taste the heat and thickness on his tongue and he smiles because it's so good and he remembers, remembers something that he's not sure if he knows entirely, maybe it was something Shaggydog knows or something he's going to know soon enough. But when winter comes he'll know. 

(He closes his eyes and he's back at home in a freezing castle and mother and father and his brothers and sisters are back, with wolf eyes like him, and he leans back his head and closes his eyes and snow falls through the fallen-through roof and it tastes like the red of animals that cannot kill wolves.) 

 

 


End file.
